Money Up Front

The above Polish film poster has nothing to do with the this post but isn't it great?

After a good couple of months of stress at work and weekend lethargy and a crisis of commitment I'm back with a post on the books I've ordered money up front for the next couple of months. I've been reading plenty recently and will review books over the next weeks to get back up to speed.
In no specific order:
Young Liars
Batman and Robin
I Kill Giants
Scalped
The Art Of Harvey Kurtzman
Amazing Spider-Man
Hellboy
Northlanders
Asterios Polyp
Wednesday Comics
Hunter
The Nobody
Seaguy
Dark Reign Zodiac
Detective Comics
Ghost Rider by Jason Aaron
You'll note that my priorities are well aligned in the face of the credit crunch...

Dark Horse Noir should be out very soon. Featuring a ton of great creators doing short crime stories, this looks like an anthology that will definitely have more good than so so in it. Brian Azzarello, Ed Brubaker, David Lapham, Rick Geary, Paul Grist, Jeff Lemire, Sean Phillips, Eduardo Barreto are the known quantities while M. K. Perker, and Alex de Campi, who knows. As always the "and more" bit causes a little concern but we should see soon. Preview available here.

3 Story is very much a leap of faith. I've heard good things about Matt Kindt and the premise for this book is interesting. Kindt has a reputation for creating a whole world with a lot of work invested in the design and supplementary material to give a 'whole' experience. Rather than paraphrasing the sollictiation I'll just direct you here.

The next Modern Masters is a retrospective interview with Darwyn Cooke. The success of these books is very dependant on the subject. The Lee Weeks and Chris Sprouse volumes recently were great while the Kyle Baker one left me kind of cold (apart from the part where he talked about helping Lynn Varley with computer colouring for Dark Knight 2). This should be good as Cooke doesn't come across as a guy who wastes his time on projects.

Gotham Central volume 2 will be great. I know this as I've already read it. Brubaker and Rucka with Michael Lark. What's not to like. If you didn't follow this series, can't recommend it enough. I think by the end of it we'll have four hard covers and I'd recommend at least the first three. Volume 2 has a great Joker as a sniper, randomly (?) taking out passers by.

This is one of those satisfying moments where I'm gald I've waited all these years before spending money on Groo as we're gonna get it all collected book by book in it's entirity, "Collecting material from Destroyer Duck #1, Starslayer #5, Pacific Comics's Groo the Wanderer #1-#8, Eclipse Comics's Groo the Wanderer Special #1, and Epic's The Groo Chronicles #1-#6". Great stuff to sit next to my seven complete Concrete books!

Umbrella Academy: Dallas was a painful wait for me. The first series was excellent and Gabriel Ba's covers are so well designed and so well coloured (Dave Stewart of course). Nice to have something genuinely new under the sun.

As a die hard Mignola slash Hellboy slash beautiful books fan this is an absolute no-brainer. My Sunday afternoons sail by with these librart editions and I struggle to think of anyone else's work that would merit the format and the cash.

This is another example of glad I waited. For some reason the Fantagraphics versions of the Usagi books have always been about a centimeter smaller than the Dark Horse versions and with boring design. Recently they improved on the design but they're still smaller than the Dark Horse versions. Now Fantagraphics are doing a two book slipcase hard covers containg all of the Fantagraphics books with all the covers and supplementary material. There are two versions, a normal one and one signed with a sketch at 95$. Not going to comment on which version I'm getting. Usagi is a pure pleasure, great cartooning and solid characters. Self contained stories which conribute to the greater whole of the saga.

A good time to be reading Usagi. To celebrate 25 years Stan Sakai is producing a new full colour graphic novel, fully painted. At $14.95 it'll be a great opportunity to sample the character if you haven't tried it yet. The talking animals aspect of the series as an off-putting factor crumbles under the great story telling and intensly researched feudal Japanese backdrop. Check it out if you haven't.

This is a mention of something that I'd be getting if I didn't already have it (and I still might trade up for new Dave Stewart colour sections in Hell). On the back of Guy Davis's long overdue recognition as one of the great storytellers and designers in comics, Dark Horse are releasing a collection of the two Oni Marquis books, in preparation for more material coming up. The Marquis is a good and creepy series about a guy who has been gifted with a sight that allows him to see through the disguises that demons ware to allow them to move freely though a vice ridden, hedonistic alternate 17/1800s. He has his doubts about his sanity and as the book goes on, you do too.

Collecting the serialised adaptation of the original Vertigo novel by Gaiman, the Sandman Dream Hunters is P Craig Russell at his best, artwise. No slavish photo reference as in the Ring, to drag you out of the story. I loved the Coraline adaptation and have high hopes of good P Craig with this.

The current series of Thor has been GREAT. I've only read the first trade which is all Olivier Coipel but the series is so understated, so subtle and graceful for superhero book that your constantly taken aback at what's not happening. When the action comes its welcome but you also want to get through it again to the quiet Oklahoma moments. Love it and this looks like it'll be volume two of three as Straczynski's off to DC.

Coming soon...

Rather than flatly recap on everything I've read in the time since my last post and perhaps things that can't easily be found, I thought I'd show where I'll spending my money 'sight unseen' in the months to come. In order of publisher/imprint.

From Vertigo, I've the final 100 Bullets book, having avoided spoilers online. Thinking on it, I've no idea what to expect as I don't feel that the series has been building to a climax so I'm very intrigued to see how the last 12 years or what have you come to a head. You know what you're getting with Risso's art but Azzarello's endings have been pretty varied in success over the years. This has a lot to live up to and the mumblings I've seen online suggest that he pulls it off.

Also from Vertigo come the first two of the Crime Graphic Novel line. The Iain Rankin one I'll wait and see on but the the Azzarello one I will pick up knowing his work of course but also that of Victor Santos, a Spanish artist who while still wearing his influences on his sleeve (Cooke, Muñoz, Timm, Miller) can really tell a story and engage.

The second (and apparently penultimate) Young Liars TP is also coming. While the characters are all pretty unlikable (as you'd expect from Dave Lapham) by the end of the first book I was onboard. I've seen him say that it was always gonna be a slow burn and my lack of monthly support of the book probably contributed to it's demise but some books, full of ads, on shitty paper need the wait. Vertigo monthly books aren't nice objects, and the collections aren't much better but at least they don't have 30% ads. Great covers by Lapham though...

A fill in on Northlanders by the amazing Daniel Zezelj will get snapped up. Brian Wood's work is always readable enough and this book has peaked my interest a little already but from what I've seen this will be the best looking issue thus far. This'll maybe tide me over while waiting for the rest of Warren Ellis' excellent Desolation Jones.


The final part of of the middle chapter of Morrison and Stewart's Seaguy will undoubtedly leave me wanting more as much as the first one did. Of Morrison's trilogy of trilogies from a few years back, while I loved WE3, Vinamarama didn't do much for me but Seaguy blew me away and looked liked a likely candidate for a Big Numbers award for unfinished comic symphonies.

Unbelievably, Spirit #29 will be a one-off story bringing together Dean Motter and Paul Rivoche. While often linked to Mister X together, this will be the longest collaboration between the two that I've seen and one thing's certain, that it'll have lots of gorgeous city and shadows. Rivoche spends most of his time doing distinctive design and background work for animation and I'm always happy to see him in comics.
Also Spirit #30 will be by Mike Oeming and I'll be getting that too!!

Following an issue by Paul Gulacy (the previous one he did was great, by the way) the first six parter in the series starts. When they originally talked about this story it was going to be by Rafa Garres but in the end it'll be drawn by Cristiano Cucina who a quick Google image search show looks like a good fit.

DC have got me buying two Batman books a month again having given me a couple of skip months with Tony Daniel comics. Morrison and Quietly are back, doing Batman with no indication of what we can expect. Don't overly care what I get, I'm sure it'll be great regardless of who's Batman, who's Robin etc. Reason to get the issues? This has been set up to be a rotating art team (as opposed to "Quietly as the artist" that we got on the X-Men).

Detective Comics will be nothing if not gorgeous with JH Williams on art with Dave Stewart colours and a Question back up by Cully Hamner. I like Greg Rucka a lot on various things (previous Detective Comics, Gotham Central, White Out) but not enough to swear by (Wolverine, Wonder Woman). Through in Batwoman and the female Question and my doubts increase. Everything to play for...

Got rid of my old Sleeper trades in favour of the new two complete books. If you've not read Sleeper, it's as good as anything else Brubaker's worked on. Great intrigue, character, dialogue and great art by Sean Phillips.

From Marvel, as always, my only interest is in the odd one-shot, fill-in or mini that they've gotten really quite good at. The Trial Of Thor is a great title for a book and makes me think back to John Byrne FFs. Written by Peter Milligan who can be great and drawn by Cary Nord who's work since Conan (always at Marvel) has left me a lttle cold. I don't think people should stick to a genre because they're good at it necessarily, but this will definitely be a return to subject matter which he excels at. Hope Dave Stewart's on colours. We'll see.

Continuing Marvel's 70th Anniversary specials, comes The Young Allies by Roger Stern (who is one of the few 80s writers who I think can still impress) and Paulo Riviera. Riviera has done quie a bit of painted work for Marvel, largely with Paul Jenkins, and didn't do much for me (as painted comics often don't). A couple of months back he did half of one of the large Spier-Man Extras with Zeb Wells. This was all done in pen and ink, a Spidey/Wolverine story that was Zeb Wells great and funny but his art was really gave it something more. Someone to keep an eye on.

Written by Jesse Alexander, one of the Heroes/Lost guys, Sgt Fury will tie-in (hopefully tenuously) to Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's Captain America White. I expect to pick that TP up as I think Tim Sale's great and I'll just have to hope the story doesn't get too much in the way (as it did with Catwoman: When in Rome, which was terrible). Back to the book at hand, Sgt Fury will be drawn by John Paul Leon, reason enough for me. After Winter Men, I'll follow him anywhere. I've a list of guys I'll follow onto everything and It feels like its getting shorter. A subject for another post, perhaps.

Fin Fang Four is another outing of a team of various Kirby monsters as a team. Drawn by the great Roger Langridge and written by by Scott Gray, I imagine that the various shorts of this will end up collected in one book but for me it's a bit of an oasis in the midst of all the Civil War/Dark Avengers/Secret Invasion type stuff that I find a real turn off. Genuinely funny, this comic feels like it shouldn't exist but I'll take it while I can.

Wolverine #s73 & 74 are two stand alone issues cut in half split over two issues. A bit annoying as either half of these two would hold up. We get Daniel Way (who's alright) and Tommy Lee Edwards on one half of each and Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert on the other half. Should be good.

Mark Waid is on a three part Spidey story with Mark McKone. McKone doesn't do a massive ammount for me but he's got his own style and can tell a story. The hook for me on this is Mark Waid. He recently did a Spidey two parter with Marcus Martin which was excellent bringing in J Jonah Jameson's dad and a great Peter Parker. I dip in and out of Amazing Spider-Man depending who's on it but lately Zeb Wells, Bachalo, Dan Slott, JR JR, it's worth keeping an eye on.

Lastly, Dark Reign; Zodiac, a three issue mini by Joe Casey and Nathan Fox. At three issues, the chances are that when they collect this they'll stick in some old appearance to pad the book out and thet drives me nuts. As such, I'll get the issues on this. Nathan Fox has a great brush style (influence of Paul Pope in there) and drew the great looking Pigeons From Hell from Dark Horse. Joe Casey has been great for years and his Iron Man enter the Mandarin was excellent. Worth looking at.

Well that's it. There's no Dark Horse or Image here, and maybe I'll do that later but that ammounts, more or less, to Joe Kelly at Image and Mignola at Dark Horse.
There are plenty of things like Scalped, Criminal and different minis but I'll push them as they come up.

Update

Hi there! Been way too long since my last post. Good reason though as we've been in the process of moving for the last six weeks. Constant and exhausting but we're at the end of it now. We're in a fanTAStic flat which has daylight and everything!
What I thought was going to be a spare room has in fact evolved into 'my' room full of comics and basically my stuff!!!!
Above is the view from the balcony and photos of the room follow, including the bookshelve for library voyeurs like me. But first a wedding present from the increasingly fantastic Duncan Fegredo:



The following is a turn around of the room!









...and a close up on the Toppi shelf!!!


IDW are publishing one of their little swallow books of Toppi in June:



This'll be the first full publication of a Toppi book outside Europe. I'm hoping this means IDW are planning to do something with the rest of the Toppi back catalogue. Fingers crossed.
Done all sorts since I last posted of course, read some great comics, read some ok ones, saw Watchmen but more on all this later.

A Little bit of Genius

Had a nostalgic moment today, remembering Bugs Bunny on Broadway and telling a colleague. This was a show with a full orchestra playing an original version of a piece of classical music, then a cinema screen showed the Chuck Jones cartoon inspired by it with the full orchestra playing the music for it (think 'Kill The Wabbit, KILL THE WABBIT')
I can think of few experiences in my life as hugely fullfilling than hearing the Looney Tunes opening theme played live.
Below is a short called High Note

Leonardi Request

Following an article I read on Brian Conlin's comics should be good, here
about who designed the Spider-Man black costume, someone posted whether they could find Zeck or Leonardi's designs online anywhere. While I get the impression that Zeck's sketch was just that, Leonardi's fairly complete designs were published in Wizard's Spider-Man 2009 1/2 and are scanned below for your pleasure.

Time Out and Happy New Year

Been a long time as always between posts. I got into a slump between my wedding and my honeymoon, which I'm now on.
I write this from sunny Bogota,Colombia, in the house of my family here accompanied by my wife and my mum's here for a bit of it too.
2009 holds a move of house which I'm very much not looking forward to. A flathunt ahead and literally tonnes of books to move makes it all seem a bit daunting. I've not thought of work stuff for two weeks and that's marvellous.
My chosen reading for the holiday, last minute, the evening before flying out, was Dylan On Dylan (the collection of interviews), Catch 22 (which I've not had any significant time to sink my teeth into) and a bunch of comic rereads.
As I invariably write about comics I'll focus on them.
The comics are:
Batman Year One. I brought the new version of the softcover with me (not the old hardcover or the original issues which sit at home). Yes, it's an obvious choice but a book that never bores me, that I read cover to cover every time I pick it up and casually read the first page "I should have taken the train...". Can't help it. The new version contains a new Miller text piece "22 year old paralegal Stacy Lynch withdrew charges of gang rape..." (thanks Frank) and waaaaay more impressive Loads of supplemental Mazzuchelli bits and 4 pages of new comic by the great man on the subject of...Batman. I'm aware that I'll dig out the issues when I get back too...
Trinity by Matt Wagner. I like Matt Wagner a lot. My old mate and boss at the comic shop agrued that he gets worse all the time. While I agree on both his main points (he's never done anything, visually better than the original Batman/Grendel and that his cover paintings for DC over the years have been really poor) I can't help but feel, as with Miller (artwise) that the choices he makes are based on choices, rather than arthritis or failing eyesight. Trinity suffered from the start for me by pitting the three DC bigguns against three respective villains, a little contrived. The book is full of nice moments for each of the characters showing that Wagner does have a strong opinion on how each of the characters should be handled. The art is solid, the storytelling as strong as one would expect and the art is elevated by Dave Stewart (one of the best elevators in comics). The book is strong enough that I manage to enjoy it while only caring about two thirds of the cast.
JLA Earth 2 by Morrison & Quietly. Not a great deal to say about thebook apart from it breaks my heart that Howard Porter got to draw all those great Morrison JLA stories when Quietly so perfectly nails each of the characters and so succinctly tells a great story full of great moments. "Their hearts are on the right side of their bodies". We get the Earth 2 Crime Sindicate so brilliantly realised that Owlman comes across as cool as Batman. Love to see more of it.
Lastly Metal Men by Duncan Rouleau. This was a second reading of this odd, dense but compelling book. The story is based on Morrison concepts (and I'd like to know quite what that means) and so is fairly mental. Rouleau's art has come a long way since Alpha Flight and Superman, largely thanks to a strong design sense and able use of, I assume, Photoshop to create digital collages of cityscapes and techno. His storytelling is ambitious, and some could argue at times overly so, but the end result comes across like a mix between Chris Bachalo and a modern Steranko. Storywise the book flows out 52 which I didn't read but explains the events of Oolong Island that act as a catalyst for everything in a way that makes me feel to read 52 but not that I have to. The colours are amazing in a Dave McCaig vain and contribute greatly to the feel of the book. Well worth look. Ambitious and inventive.
Next up, the last book of the holiday, a well overdue reread of Elektra: Assassin.

Joker

To avoid banging on about how great Morrison is, how inappropriate Tony Daniel is and how much everybody should be reading Criminal, Scalped and Jonah Hex, I'm gonna take the opportunity to review one of the books I was very much looking forward to and mentioned in my last post.
Azzarello and Lee Bermejo are undoubtedly a good fit for one and other. Azzarello's dark, jerky script goes great with Bermejo's dark, jerky art. They're obviously coming to the material from the same place.
Their first collaboration on Batman/Deathblow way back in 2002 was excellent. He was inked by Tim Bradstreet (who's also obviously coming from the same place) for most of the book and various inkers stepped in for the last part. The story was a great mystery/spy story jumping backwards and forwards in time (as Deathblow's dead) and coming together to a satisfying conclusion. Recommended!
Their second series/book was Lex Luthor, Man Of Steel. This series was announced at the same time as Azzarello's odd Superman run with Jim Lee and the great Question mini series by Rick Vietch and Tommy Lee Edwards. Lex Luthor actually appeared quite a bit later, coloured by the always impressive Dave Stewart. The series featured a couple of great Lex/Batman/Bruce Wayne moments and was a good look at Lex Luthor from his own point of view, with Superman very much a supporting role. This series debuted Lee Bermejo's new trick of some panels being shot from very finished pencils and the rest inked. More on this in a minute. A good book but a little disappointing after Batman/Deathblow.Around the same time we got Azzarello's run on Batman, with 100 Bullets buddy, Eduardo Risso. This book when serialised, was disjointed and Azzarello's generally lauded, jive talking, noir dialogue was weird stuck on a Gotham City backdrop. When collected, the whole thing reads better but it was definitely a very different Batman to any previous version of the character. Azzarello definitely had a very strong take on Batman, his connection with the city and the tragedy and obsession that drives him. It serves as the best reference point to the Joker HC released a couple of weeks back, more so than the previous work done by the Azzarello and Bermejo.
The Joker, similar to Batman Broken City, stands completely apart from any continuity which is a good thing. Azzarello gets to write his own version of everything, based on core concepts, from Killer Croc being a hard man with a funny diet and bad skin to the Joker being a unpredictable psychotic. We get a gimpy, tatooed Riddler, a genuinely jarring take on Harley Quinn that would likely come as a surprise to Paul Dini and a great Penguin (though inexplicably called Abner. An aside; I looked around thinking I might be missing some hip slang, political reference or old DC continuity but no-one online seems any the wiser...answers on a postcard).
The whole story is told from the point of view of a Joker goon who's trying to make a name for himself but very quickly realises he's out of his depth with no concept of where the Joker will lead him next.
Far and away the strongest point of the book is the depiction of the Joker (fair enough, condidering...). His mood swings, he breaks into tears, he's confident in everything, ambitious and at moments appears suicidal. As such we never no where the story will takes us either, apart from a sense of impending doom for our narrator.
Bermejo's contribution to the book can't be understated and I struggle to imagine the thing drawn by anyone else. His take on the Joker is excellent (also fair enough...) and bears such a striking resemblance to Heath Ledger's vituoso performance in Dark Knight that its difficult to believe no crossover behind the scenes. I think a lot of it comes from the sliced up cheeks that Joker's had in Morrison's Batman, the movie and here. No way that there wasn't some corporate involvement on that element at least. There are also elements of Cesar Romero, sans moustache, but Jack Nicholson is nowhere to be found.
Bermejo's Gotham City is as strong here as it's been in the past, feeling like a real place and not a mish mash of photo ref of New York and Chicago. The downfall for the book, artwise, is the choice to switch, a lot more awkwardly than on the Lex Luthor book, between digitally painted pencils and subtle, borderline flat colours over inked art by the very capable Mick Gray, long time art partner of JH Williams III. The change in style appears to happen with no rhyme or reason, with some whole sequences in digital wash and otherwise random money shot panels in the middle of the inked work. I'd be curious to know the motivation behind the changes, if anyone out there has any insight.
Its a strongly written piece with everything you expect from Azzarello, both good and bad, and solid artwork, despite the above mentioned changes in finish. Definitely a keeper, largely because of a really great Joker, and a really good Gotham. Once again an Azzarello book that underwhelms at first but grows on you as it sits in your head.